


Facets

by Fyre



Category: Moon Child (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-05
Updated: 2007-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each person becomes who they are because of another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Facets

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yule, Mushimimi! I hope you like it :)   
>  Also, many thanks to Beth Winter for holding my hand through this.
> 
> Written for mushimimi

 

 

Even though night had come, he had to close his eyes against the light. The blood had quickened in him, strong and bitter as the man he drained it from. Somewhere beyond the neon glare and the blaze of the city, he wondered if the moon was rising.

Behind him, he heard the loose masonry shift.

"Get lost," he murmured, letting his head fall back. The air was cool, the scent of the city stronger than he remembered. It felt like it would rain soon. He could smell the boy behind him, filthy and still covered in blood.

"Shinji says you're a monster."

Kei wanted to laugh at the understatement. "Shinji is a smart kid."

The boy came closer. Sho, he had called himself. "Monsters kill good guys," he said quietly. "You killed a bad guy."

He turned, looking down at the boy. The pulse still flickered nervously in his skinny neck, he noticed. He had been so tempted only hours before, but he had been half-starved.

"Maybe I wasn't hungry," he suggested.

The boy wiped his blood-stained hands on his shirt. "You could stay."

Kei laughed.

The boy looked up, defiant. There was pride in him, and so little fear. Was that was it was to be young? "I helped you. You helped us."

"So you want a monster to stay with you?" It took three steps, faster than the boy could see, to bring Kei over him, pushing him back against the wall. His hand wrapped around that skinny throat. It would be like breaking a twig. "A blood-drinking monster?"

Wondering eyes stared at him, the kid half-covered by his shadow. "How did you do that?" the boy demanded. "Could I move like that? Could you teach me?"

Kei sighed, opening his hand. "I'm not going to stay," he said, turning back to the city. It blazed and he shielded his eyes with one hand, until he grew used to the glare. "Why would I want to stay with kids?"

"Who do you stay with?"

The traffic kept moving, engines roaring up through the rows of buildings, and somewhere nearby, he could hear people calling out in the streets, selling whatever they could to keep themselves fed.

The boy's voice was shrill. "I said who do you stay with?"

"I heard the first time," Kei murmured.

"So who?"

It would have been so much simpler to lie, and to walk away.

"No one."

It was amazing how boring simple got.

For a while, the boy was silent. Then he kicked at a broken fragment of rock. It hit against the back of Kei's foot, and he looked down, squatting to pick it up. Turning it over, he tossed it up and caught it again.

"Don't you have any friends?"

Kei turned his face from the lights, bright like flames. Like sunlight shimmering on the ocean.

"I don't need friends."

The boy stepped closer. "I'll be your friend."

"Maybe I don't want to be your friend."

The boy laughed and Kei looked up at him. It wasn't a sound he heard much, not from a skinny little kid who stole from the streets. It wasn't a sound he heard much from anyone.

"You can stay with us," the boy said. He took Kei's hand. His hand was small and rough and he pulled Kei back into the ruined warehouse, and to his own surprise, Kei let him. He could get his strength back before he went out in the world again. It would shut the kid up as well.

The warm hand swung his back and forward as they walked.

Idly, he wondered how long they had been living there. The warehouse had been his home for a long time, hiding in shadows where no one would have wanted to look for shelter, but now, anyone could walk in. Anyone had. The kid and his brothers. The man he had killed.

"You shouldn't live somewhere they can find you so easily."

The boy looked up at him. "It's the only place we could find," he said, tugging Kei back into the room that was their home.

Home. It was just ruined warehouse, rows of crumbling support beams and broken windows. Kei knew it could collapse at any time. It was why he'd chosen it. Somewhere he could let himself lie low, and just wait until his body or the building gave up.

It wasn't a place for people who lived.

"What the hell are you doing?" As quiet and calm as Sho's voice had been, his brother's wasn't.

"He's staying with us," the boy replied to his brother.

Shinji, the one who has been shot, almost crawled off the broken couch until his brother let go of Kei's hand to run and stop him. "He's a monster, Sho! He's a monster! Why do you want a monster here? Don't we have enough trouble?"

Kei laughed quietly.

"Get out of here!" Shinji spat, shaking his brother's hands off him. He got to his feet, staggering towards Kei. He looked nothing like his brother. Angry and hating like so many other people. "Get out!"

"Shinji, he saved us," Sho said quietly, reaching for Shinji's arm. "He helped us."

Shinji almost fell to the floor, then cried out, holding his leg. "So let him go and help someone else!"

The younger boy pulled him back to the couch, forcing him to sit. He reached for the bandages, which were already soaking in red again. Kei turned away.

"Look! Look! He would drink my blood, Sho! If you want to keep a monster here, he'll kill you too!"

"No, he won't," Sho said quietly.

"He's right," Kei murmured, watching the boy carefully unbandage his brother's leg, then reach for the half-broken pitcher. Sho didn't look at him, wiping up the fresh blood with a piece of cloth. Kei kept his eyes on the boy's face, ignoring the sight and the smell. "I could turn on you, any time."

"You see!" Shinji's voice was a scream. "Is this what you want?"

"He won't," Sho said, and he looked over at Kei, then he smiled. "I know he won't."

Shinji laughed wildly. "How do you know that?" he demanded, his voice hysterical with pain and fear. "Are you so special? Are you magical? Can you stop monsters who can kill men with guns?" He slapped his brother's hand away from his leg. "How do you know, idiot? Who plans everything here? Who knows how things work?" He grabbed Sho's shirt, pulling the younger boy closer. "How do you know?"

Sho wrapped his thin hands around Shinji's. "Because," he said softly. "He's my friend."

~8~8~8~8~8~8~8~

It was raining again, but he didn't care. Anywhere was better than being there, with Sho and that thing. For a few days, he had agreed to let Sho keep his new pet, but when days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, it had become impossible to stand.

It had stayed with them, even when his leg had healed as much as it would ever heal. It had stayed with them, even when Shinji told it to go, to get away from them. It had laughed, then looked at Sho, and Sho had smiled as if it was his elder brother and the head of his family.

Sho didn't understand why he wanted it to go.

Leaning against the wall, Shinji ground his teeth together. There was a hole in the bottom of his shoe, and his feet were wet. The cold made his leg hurt but he had to be away. With no jobs, there was no money, and with his leg making him slow, there were less jobs than before.

Sho didn't understand anything.

Wiping rain water off his face, ignoring the warmth mixing with it, Shinji limped on, using the wall for support. He was the eldest. It was his place to provide for his brothers, to plan for them, to keep them safe and to feed them, but all Sho cared about now was learning what the monster could teach him. He never listened to his brother's advice anymore.

The lights from the streets were blurred by the rain. It was getting heavier. Shinji knew the roof wouldn't keep them dry much longer, so he wanted to find somewhere else, somewhere where his brothers could live by daylight, instead of in a place that was falling down.

The thing had said that the warehouse wasn't safe, and Shinji knew it, but they had nowhere else.

If he found somewhere else for them, maybe Sho would see and understand why he said the things he did. Maybe Sho would understand that his elder brother was protecting him and their family from dangers as much as he could.

It would be easy to make Toshi understand, once Sho would listen to him again. Sho was always the difficult one. He daydreamed too much, and always found good in things, even in monsters that ate people. He didn't know how hard it was to lead a family.

Many of the shops were closing, though lights were still on. Somewhere, there was a smell of cooking, and Shinji wondered how people could live on more than one full meal a day. Even having one meal a day was a luxury for him. They wasted so much when they had it.

Limping out from between the buildings, he found a doorway to sit in for a moment, rubbing his leg. It hurt the most when he was tired, when he couldn't ignore it. It would be good to be able to get medicine to stop it hurting, but food and a roof for his brothers were the important things now.

Someone stepped into the light, leaving him in shadow. "You. Kid. Move it."

"I'm not a kid," he said coldly, looking up.

He was cursed for his impudence, and the shadowy figure hit him, but he looked at it again. A man, a big one. He looked like he was from Mallepa too, another with Japanese blood, but that didn't mean anything anymore. They could be bastards too, just like the Koreans.

He was still blocking the light, but Shinji could see his face. He recognised him as someone who had once been like him. He had heard stories about men who had become strong after their parents left them, and were now rich and in control of parts of the district. He wondered if any of them had been shot in the leg.

The man laughed. "Not just a beggar, then," he said.

Shinji glared at him, forcing himself to his feet. "I work hard," he said fiercely. "I'm not so low as that."

The man was looking thoughtfully at him. "Work hard, huh?"

Before he could protest, Shinji's arm was grabbed in a tight grip, and he was ragged through the doorway he had been sheltering in by the man. "Hey! Hey, let go!" Half-limping, half-dragged, he was pulled onwards.

"We're looking for a hard worker, kid," the man said, his grip tightening. "If you learn a little respect, you could have work here. You want it? Or you want to be on the street, begging again?"

Shinji started to protest, but work was what he needed, and he was desperate. "I'm not a beggar," he mumbled, stumbling over his own feet.

"So you say," the man replied, pushing him through a door.

A group of men were sitting in the room around a table. It was dark, full of sweet-smelling smoke, and they looked around. "New boy, Fukito?"

The man who was holding him pushed him onto an empty couch, and he scrambled upright, watching the group nervously. "Says he's a hard worker," Fukito replied, sitting down at the table. "Crippled, but no one ever looks at them. Could be useful."

Shinji wrapped his arms over his middle, biting down his anger. He wanted to exclaim he could be as good as any one of them, if his leg worked, but if they could give him a job, so he could get a shelter for his brothers, better to stay quiet.

They ignored him, playing card games and talking about things he had never heard of, then sent him back out into the streets, saying he would have work the next day.

To his surprise, when he arrived the next day, he was sent to take messages from one of the men to another. He was given places to go. He was shown a packaging room, where he would arrange packages for them.

The money was little, but it was still money, and it meant they would be able to eat.

For the first time in weeks, Sho left his pet in the shadows to come and help him count it out, putting it into the tin, so they would always have enough to get by. Sho smiled at him, and Shinji knew his brother still trusted him.

~8~8~8~8~8~8~

It had been a hard choice.

It was true that Shinji had been working, and making money with it. He had even started talking about a business he could help to run, so they could all get a new place to live. He had been a good big brother, but it was better with Sho.

Ever since Shinji had started acting like the people he worked for, things changed. They were the powerful ones, he had said. They had drinks and drugs and guns and money, as much as they wanted. He made money from them, but even if he thought he was like them, it was the same handful that he had been clawing together for months.

Shinji didn't know it, but Sho could make more in one night than he made in a month. He always thought the money in the tin was his own doing, his brain messed up by the pipes he couldn't stop smoking. At first, they thought he was joking, but when he told them they should start trying to earn their keep, the joke wasn't funny anymore.

Sometimes, he was paid in pipes of smoke, so much that he forgot to bring money home. He could never leave his bosses either, because they were the ones who paid him in the drugs he couldn't go without. He didn't think about real things anymore, not food or shelter or anything.

The apartment they were living in was because of Sho. He had found it and kept it. For the first time in his life, Toshi had been able to sleep on something that wasn't crawling with bugs. Being able to close the door of their own apartment had been great.

He remembered watching Sho standing there, his hand on the inside of the door, as if he couldn't believe they finally had a place to call home. He had leaned forward and touched his forehead to the door, and Kei had patted him on the shoulder and laughed quietly.

"Cry-baby," he said, then gave Sho a cigarette.

That night, they had got drunk and celebrated the roof without holes and walls without leaks. It had been perfect until Shinji had returned from his employers. For once, he had not smoked, and he was angry.

Toshi thought it was because he chose to help Sho instead of working beside Shinji in the rooms full of smoke and drink. He was younger than both of them, and he knew he had to listen to his elders, but no one ever said which of them he had to listen to, so he had listened to Sho.

There had been furious arguments then, and Shinji had cursed at them and left.

That was when Toshi realised it was really because of Kei.

Shinji said that Kei was the source of all their trouble, and that he should have gone long before, but Toshi never knew why. Sho and Shinji argued about it for years, when they thought he was asleep, and he had never wanted to know why Shinji called Kei a monster.

Kei made Sho smile. To Toshi, that was a good thing. He wondered if he hadn't noticed because he was younger, but before Kei came, his brother had always seemed sad, and Shinji had always seemed angry. Now, Sho smiled as if things were a little bit better, and sometimes they even laughed together.

It was true that Shinji was the head of the family, but he hardly made any sense anymore. He laughed at things that weren`t funny, and talked at things that weren't there. He had offered to let Toshi try one of the pipes once, but seeing his eldest brother smile like that, as if everything was right in the world, had been wrong.

Shinji was the sensible one, who knew how bad things were. The happy smile that the pipes and smoke gave him was more frightening than any monster he saw in Kei.

It all came down to the smile and what was behind it.

Maybe Kei was a monster, but his smile was real, and it made Sho smile too. Shinji smiled and smiled and no one else smiled with him. Toshi knew his eldest brother would keep smiling if the world was falling down, and he knew which smile he felt safer with.

That was the last time he saw Shinji.

Sitting on the floor beside the couch, Toshi counted out the night's take. It wasn't as much as it could have been, but it was more than they'd had in a long time. Dividing it into three piles, he looked across the room.

The apartment was small and there was no way you couldn't see what was going on in other half of it, but it had a roof and walls, and even a window. On the mats, Kei and Sho were sitting against the wall, shoulder to shoulder. They weren't talking. They didn't talk a lot, so Toshi usually made up for it. Someone had to make a noise, after all.

Now, though, he didn't feel like talking.

A cigarette was dangling from Kei's fingers. It was the last one. Sho crumpled the carton and muttered a complaint about the rain that was beating against the windows. Kei laughed quietly, then lifted his hand and let Sho take a drag from his own cigarette. As Sho blew the smoke out, Kei dragged the cigarette across his own lips and closed his eyes.

Watching them, Toshi rolled the notes into bundles.

They were friends, but sometimes, it was like they were one person in two bodies. They didn't even need to talk to each other most of the time. Since Shinji left, Kei was the person that Sho listened to. He was older, so it made sense. He had a clean head too, not like Shinji. He could think, and with Sho, they came up with plans to make themselves rich.

Tucking the money into the tin, Toshi wondered if he could have been like that with Sho, if Kei hadn't been there. Probably not. Even with Shinji, Sho had never been like that, but then Shinji and Sho had never been friends.

Still, they let him stay, and he was happy.

He had asked Sho if he should leave them once, just after Shinji left, even though he didn't want to go and find Shinji again. Sho had stared at him and had smacked him on the side of the head and told him he was an idiot. Kei had laughed, and Toshi had laughed too, although he didn't know why.

He pressed the lid down on the tin.

"You done?" Sho asked, opening one eye.

Toshi nodded. "More than last month," he said, getting up. "Told you! We're going to be rich!"

"Maybe," Sho replied, sitting up and leaning forward on his knees.

Toshi made a face at him. "Maybe? We get more every month and you say maybe?"

Sho nodded. "Maybe," he repeated. "Don't count your money until it's in your hand."

Toshi held up the tin. "It is!"

"So now, you can buy your own cigarettes," Kei said. His eyes were still closed, but he looked like he was almost smiling. "Damn kid, stealing all mine."

"Go to hell!" Sho elbowed Kei in the ribs, and the older man laughed. "Jerk."

Looking from one to the other, Toshi rolled his eyes and went to put the tin away.

Sometimes, he managed to get in and be part of them, and they treated him like he was one of them for a while, but he always got pushed away again. They didn't even realise they were doing it. Still, even those little times, when he was in, were enough.

He looked over his shoulder at them. Sho took another drag on the cigarette in Kei's hand and Kei smiled, humming to himself.

Collecting his cap, Toshi pushed it onto his head. "I'm going to work," he announced.

They didn't even notice.

 


End file.
